Good morning, committee chairs, committee members, staff and members of the public

My name is Caleb Kleppner, and I was hired by the city to design the
instant runoff voting or IRV voter education program, to train
pollworkers about IRV, and to train city staff on the software used to
tally the IRV election results. I also assisted Director of
Elections Jo LaMarche with the design and evaluation of the
pre-election logic and accuracy testing of Burlington’s voting
equipment.

By way of background, I worked for FairVote – the Center for Voting and
Democracy for five years when I was living in San Francisco. In
that capacity, I drafted the IRV legislation adopted by the voters in
March 2002 and worked with city and state officials in the development,
testing and deployment of the optical scan voting equipment used to
conduct IRV elections in 2004 and 2005 in San Francisco.

1. How did Burlington’s first IRV election go?

By all accounts -- my personal observations of the Burlington wards and
from the media coverage -- the election went extremely smoothly.
Voters didn’t have trouble filling out their ballots, and pollworkers
didn’t have problems with the IRV portion of the process. I think
you’ll hear testimony from some pollworkers, but the comment that stuck
with me was that the people staffing the IRV help desks were
bored. The Burlington Free Press headlined their story about the
voting, “Burlington Voters Ace Instant Runoff.”

In terms of logistics, polls closed at 7 pm, and we ran the IRV tally and announced the results by 9:05 pm.

2. Some have speculated that IRV might be too
difficult for voters, in particular, too difficult for low income
voters. Was it?

Let’s imagine what we would expect to see if the system was confusing
for voters and especially low income voters. Then we can see if
that happened.

First, we would expect lower voter turnout. In fact, citywide
voter turnout was more than 25% higher than any mayoral election since
1999, which is as far back as I was able to go. In the lowest
income ward, Ward 3 turnout was 25% higher than the 2003 mayoral
election and 72% higher than the 2001 election. Thus, we have no
evidence that IRV depressed turnout citywide or in Burlington, nor in
low-income neighborhoods.

Second, we would expect more voters to skip over the mayor’s race
compared to other races. This year, about 1% of voters skipped
over the mayor’s race. In contrast, 2% skipped the mayor’s race
in 2001 and 24% skipped it in 2003. In Ward 3, 1% skipped the
mayor’s race, the citywide average. In every city council ward,
more voters voted in the mayor’s race than in every other race –
something that was not true in 2003. In Ward 3, voters were five
times more likely to skip the contested city council race, which did
not use IRV, than the mayor’s race. Thus there is no evidence
that IRV led to more voters skipping the mayor’s race citywide or in
low-income areas. Third, we would expect the rate of invalid ballots to rise. This
year, the invalid ballot rate for mayor was one tenth of one per cent,
meaning that 99.9% of voters cast a valid vote. I do not have
data for past mayoral elections, but I know from national experience
that this is an extremely low invalid ballot rate. For example,
in the 2000 presidential election in Florida, the overvote rate was
around twenty times higher.

In Ward 3, there were exactly two invalid ballots out of nearly 1,200
voters. It’s hard to have a lower rate than that. Again, no
evidence that IRV led to increased invalid ballots, nor that voters in
Ward 3 were more likely to cast invalid ballots.

Fourth, we would expect voters to forego the opportunity to rank
candidates. There were 3 major candidates in this race.
Voters ranked on average 2.9 candidates, and in Ward 3 voters ranked
3.1 candidates (highest of all 7 wards). 82% of Burlington voters
ranked more than one candidate, and 83% of Ward 3 voters ranked
multiple candidates. Thus, no evidence that IRV discouraged
voters from ranking multiple candidates, and in fact, Ward 3 voters
ranked more candidates than voters in other wards.

Fifth, we would expect large numbers of exhausted ballots, meaning
ballots that did not rank one of the top two candidates. Over 89%
of all voters and 93% of Ward 3 voters ranked one of the top two
candidates. Thus, the vast majority of voters cast a vote that
counted in the decisive round of the instant runoff – and those that
didn’t were largely Republican voters who quite rationally may have
decided to refrain from expressing a preference between the Democrat
and the Progressive.

Even though this was the first time Burlington voters voted in an IRV
elections, there is no evidence that IRV discouraged voters from
participating and there’s no evidence that the system posed any burden
for low income voters.

Note that these conclusions mirror what happened in San Francisco,
where some people speculated that IRV might be disadvantageous to Asian
Americans. Professor Rich DeLeon of San Francisco State
University analyzed 18 hypotheses and concluded: “Based on the
evidence …, the score is zero for 18” that IRV disadvantages Asian
American voters in San Francisco.

3. Would a runoff have been better?

Burlington is currently preparing a runoff election in Ward 7 because
no candidate received 40% of the vote. Turnout generally drops in
runoffs. For example, in federal runoff elections between 1994
and 2004, voter turnout went down in 94 out of 96 races. Overall
turnout declined by 38%. In the past two Burlington city council
runoffs, voter turnout dropped by an average of 35%.

By holding an instant runoff, Burlington saved the cost and hassle of holding a separate election and maximized voter turnout.

4. Conclusions

The administration of this election was extremely smooth, and voters
demonstrated they are perfectly capable of participating effectively in
an instant runoff election.

Thank you for your attention, and I would be glad to answer any questions you might have.

By all accounts --- my personal observations of the Burlington wards
and from the media coverage -- the election went extremely smoothly.

· Voters didn’t have trouble filling out their
ballots, and pollworkers didn’t have problems with the IRV portion of
the process.· People staffing the IRV help desks were bored.· The Burlington Free Press headlined a story about the election, “Burlington Voters Ace Instant Runoff.”· After Ward Clerks finished announcing ward-level results, we announced IRV results at 9:05 pm.

Voters will skip the mayor’s race: Citywide: 1% skipped mayor,
much lower than previous mayoral elections (2% and 24%).
Ward 3: 1% skipped the mayor’s race, but 5 times as many skipped the
contested city council race that didn’t use IRV.

Invalid ballots will rise: Citywide: Invalid rate was 0.1%,
which is extremely low by national standards. Ward 3: Only 2
invalid ballots out of 1,200. For comparison, there were 4
invalid ballots in a Ward 7 runoff in 2004, and that election only had
1 race and 2 candidates on the ballot.